I agree. One of my kids is a huge fan of the game, and plays it often with her friends. The group is so mixed in every way and yet they can play it, have a great time, and not be offensive to each other. Most of the combinations can be made silly or absurd or even poignant without going for the cheap laughs, and if there is an obviously bigoted card (such as the example above: “Whining like a little bitch”), they openly acknowledge the prejudice as they’re playing.
If you (general meaning of the word) choose to put together cards that say something racist, sexist, etc. without irony, that’s on you. But for many people, that is the point of the game: to be able to say prejudicial things and claim “oh, it’s just the game”.
While I agree that the cultural obsession with “lets be taboo to be taboo!” is juvenile and destructive, I don’t think that’s the fun in CAH. The fun is in the unexpected, the comedy of violated expectations, like MadLibs. The taboo just ups the level of unexpected and gives it a bit of a punch.
So I don’t think you or your buds are quite on-point here, but I appreciate the sentiment.
If you have several hundred cards in a deck, seven in your hand, and a dozen people playing, the only thing ‘scripted’ is that there’s words printed on cards. In my experience, the cards that ‘win’ aren’t pure non-sequiturs. They’re cards that fit the answer so perfectly that it’s as if they were written for them.
Growing up, being trans was taboo, while mocking trans people as freaks was and is not taboo. Between being disabled, autistic, intersex, and trans, I got bullied, and I often got beaten up, and I got ptsd from all that.
So maybe certain cards give you the chance to say something that, for you, is taboo, and for another player is too familiar and triggering. I haven’t played Cards Against Humanity, but I don’t think that’s a good dynamic for a party game.
Now if everyone sometimes has to do something taboo, then we should (a) have plenty of taboos about harmless optional things, like bicycling on wednesdays, and (b) avoid having taboos about non-optional things, like being trans, or menstruating, or being left-handed.
The point a lot of people are making is that the racist/Holocaust jokes are an extremely small percentage of cards in the deck (depending, of course, on how many cards the game-owner has). You can even take them out. Cards that “win” in CAH are almost always clever, unique, unexpected combinations of phrases. Yelling something racist isn’t funny. Playing a card that fits perfectly into an answer while also surprising people is how you “win” – and why things are funny in CAH. Saying something naughty is what the author focused on, which shows their ignorance.
In a way though, CAH allows discussion at all of some of these things. If ‘Transexuals’ is a card, it has the potential to be placed in hateful contexts, but also in positive ones. It’s literally ‘in play’ as something that can be discussed. Apples to Apples wouldn’t include the card at all. Unless one made their own card, the topic is figuratively and literally off the table - which I don’t think helps anyone.
I’d at least nominate Snake Oil. It’s the same formula except you’re using a combo of cards to make a product which you then have to pitch to a specific kind of customer. If you want to make it filthy, it’s easy to do so, but (and this is the key difference that the article was getting at) you have to bring your own filth.
You can play Snake Oil with a bunch of third graders or a bunch of drunk assholes making zero changes to the game.
This, exactly. Racism isn’t funny; a nasty racist-type person playing racist cards isn’t going to get any traction in the game, won’t have fun, and will probably just give up. The game is actually sort of self-censoring, in a way. But if you’re playing with smart, caring, clever people who play a “racist” card (which, truthfully, don’t really exist – it’s how you play cards that make them racist), it’ll be funny because it’s poking fun at horrible racists.
It’s wrong, though. Most of the winning jokes are the opposite of paint-by-numbers, because paint-by-numbers jokes aren’t funny. I’ve played a few games with different groups, and most of the time, the winning combinations are surreal (and obviously dirty).
Uh… okay, I don’t think you understood anything I’ve said so far. That wasn’t a list “that described games I didn’t like”, most of my favorite games have one or more qualities on that list. It was a list of traits that make a game inappropriate for filling the niche CAH fills, and most “awesome” table-top games people talk about fail to fill that niche by meeting one or more of those qualifications. I was pointing out that the existence of other ‘awesome’ games doesn’t make those games intrinsically better than CAH if they are awesome in ways that also make them worse at the niche CAH aims to fill.
You were the one originally asserting that it was bad people played CAH when these other “awesome” games exist.
Can you please stop liking what I don’t like? The fact that you may like something that other people may not like is triggering and problematic.
I am of course self-qualified to speak for others in this matter. Because I can imagine a scenario in which the thing you like could possibly offend others, you must abide by my interpretation so as not to risk offending anyone at all.
That you do not already dislike the thing that I dislike indicates that you are in need of re-education to meet my standards, for the Greater Good.
Wow I’d missed this one - really good read as it happens (although very little of it is about the game)! Do love their writing.
But Cards Against Humanity is a terrible game. Let’s be clear here. It’s an awful game. It’s not even a game at all. It’s a pastime. And a weird one. It’s a good laugh, sure, when you’re playing it with good people. But then, everything is a good laugh when you’re playing with good people. I dislike Cards Against Humanity because it’s completely mindless. When you look at your hand of cards, all you’re really doing is reading a string of jokes and choosing the funniest one. If your idea of a good time is sitting in a room with friends and reading through sickipedia.org until you see a joke you like, then Cards Against Humanity might be the game for you.
